{How to} be a baker

Tracy Silverman, owner of Sweet Lucy's Bakery in Morristown, NJ, offers her tips for pursuing your baking dreams.

• "To become a good baker, you must have a real love for it."
• "If you keep working at a recipe over and over again, you will perfect it eventually."
• "For my bakery's chocolate chip cookies, I probably tried at least 20 different recipes. Doing that gives you a familiarity of what differentiates one recipe from another. Focus in on the best recipe, and then tweak it to make it just right to your tastes."
• "Use high-quality ingredients. At my bakery, we use the highest quality butter, chocolate and vanilla. There's no shortening or preservatives. It makes a difference."
• "When you own a bakery, you need to balance your time. It's easy to get tunnel vision with perfecting that one recipe and losing sight of the big picture. I realized if I spend too much time in the kitchen, I neglect everything else that needs to get done."
• "A few months after Sweet Lucy's opened, I started to not feel well and went to the doctor. They told me I had pneumonia. Because I was running on adrenaline, I didn't realize how sick I was. I had to take a week off, and it was a huge learning experience for me. I learned life can go on without me, and the importance of delegating. I didn't need to be the person who mopped the floors. I didn't need to count every coin. I didn't need to do everything."

Thanks so much, Tracy!
(Check out Sweet Lucy's Facebook page.)